


Stone Number One

by wanttobeatree



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Christmas, Gen, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 07:30:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanttobeatree/pseuds/wanttobeatree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have a home, they have friends, they have the King of Hell locked in their basement. They could have a good Christmas this year, Sam thinks, if he could only keep track of time–-</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stone Number One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theoret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoret/gifts).



> For Theo! Our favourite theory, in fic form (& probably about to be 100% Jossed by 9x09.)

“You know,” Sam says, warm and comfortable, a mug of hot coffee in his hands. He stretches his legs out in the chair he has somehow, slowly, come to think of as _his_ chair and he nudges Dean with a toe. Dean grunts without looking up from the newspaper he’s poring over; he’s sitting in the chair Sam has started thinking of as Dean’s, too.

“You know,” Sam says again, louder. “It’s almost Christmas.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, his eyes flicking up to Sam, and he raises an eyebrow. “Worried you’re gonna get coal in your stocking?”

“Nah, I’ve been good.” Sam rolls his shoulders, smiling into his coffee at Dean’s derisive snort. He nudges him with his toes again. “I mean, we could actually kinda... _do_ Christmas this year. I mean, we – we have this home now, sort of. We could get a tree, eat a Christmas dinner that wasn’t heated in a microwave. If you wanna.”

He shrugs. Dean stares at him, pen frozen in his hand with the tip still poised on the article he was circling.

“That’s gonna bleed through the page,” Sam says.

“But you hate Christmas,” Dean says.

“No, you know that’s not... I didn’t like our Christmases. Sorry,” he adds, as Dean’s expression sours, “but they were never exactly full of holiday cheer. Christmas in motels, with beer can wreathes, me and Dad always fighting? And even after he died, things were...”

“Bugfuck apocalypse crazy?”

Sam grins at his coffee. “Right. But we’re doing kinda okay now, aren’t we? We’re alive and in one piece, no... deals, or trials or anything hanging over our heads. We have a homebase, we have the King of Hell locked in our basement, we’re working on the angels. For the first time in a... a really long time, things are kinda beginning to go our way. We should celebrate.”

“Barely an apocalypse at all,” Dean says, lifting up his own mug in salute.

“And Kevin needs a holiday, too. You could make eggnog.”

“Well, I’m sure as hell not letting you make it again.” Dean jabs a finger at him. “That stuff could strip paint. I can still taste it when I burp, Sam.”

“Yeah... Guess I needed something strong that year.”

Dean’s face crumples for a second, his finger lowering, and then he sighs. “Yeah, I guess you did. Hey, c’mere, take a look at this.”

“ _You_ come here.”

Dean stares at him flatly until Sam heaves a sigh, levers himself up out of his chair - _his_ chair – and rounds the table to peer over Dean’s shoulder to look at the article in the newspaper. The ink has bled into the cheap paper, obscuring the first word. Sam blots the ink with a finger, Dean rolling his eyes.

“Looks like a haunting,” Dean says. “Just a couple towns over. We could check it out. You know Garth’ll get pissy if we give him the lead when we’re already the hunters closest to it, anyway.”

Sam tugs the paper closer, scanning the article for the usual details. A little museum in a small town. Locked door, dead body, freak accident. Nothing like an animal attack. Nothing like the senseless violence of a demon. He shrugs.

“Yeah, okay.”

“So, we’re all in agreement?” Dean clears his throat. “You don’t think it’s... something we should avoid?”

His tone is awkward, laden with emphasis. He stares indecipherably at Sam, until Sam shakes his head and looks down at the newspaper again. 

“We can check it out, call Garth if it seems like something bigger than-” 

His mouth snaps shut and he stares at the article. Suddenly he can’t remember what he was going to say. He hesitates, drumming his fingers on the paper. 

“I feel up to it,” he settles on, at last.

“Huh?” Dean says, and then, “Right, right. As long as you’re sure, or whatever.”

“I’m sure.”

Still staring, Dean nods at him. 

 

*

 

They split up in the little museum, Dean going left and Sam going right. He climbs up the rickety stairs to the second floor, the beam of his flashlight catching on fossils and dioramas and portraits of long-dead notable citizens. Anything in here could carry a ghost or contain a curse. Down below, he can hear the steady, unpanicked beeping of Dean’s EMF meter. He tugs his cell out, flashlight clamped between his teeth, and texts Dean ‘Check recent acquisitions.’

He’s studying a display of the town’s first settlers when the temperature drops so suddenly his breath freezes on the glass. Sam spins, pulling his gun from the back of his jeans and catching a glimpse of a furious, flickering face before the ghost throws him into a wall headfirst. Something shatters overhead. He throws an arm over his face as glass rain downs on him, each touch as cold as ice. His ears are ringing, but the gun is in his hand, so Sam hurls himself up onto his feet and takes aim-

“Sam!” Dean shouts. 

He’s standing right in front of Sam, with his hands held out in front of him in placation and Sam’s gun pointed at his chest. Sam lowers his arm so fast he wrenches his shoulder. He whips around. The lights are on, the temperature normal, the ghost nowhere to be seen.

“Did you – You got it?”

Dean’s fingers curl, his shoulders slumping, and he rubs his hand across his mouth. “Yeah,” he says, looking at the diorama of the settlers.

“How’d you get here so fast?”

“I heard something break, ran up here, shot Casper full of salt.” Dean shrugs.

Sam stows his gun away. When he shakes his head, a few shards of glass fall out of his hair onto the ground; he scuffs them with his boot.

“But it was only a couple seconds,” he says slowly, running a hand through his hair.

“I ran fast.”

There’s blood in Sam’s hair, and on his fingers. He stares at his hand. “I... I guess I hit my head.”

“C’mere.” Dean tugs at him until Sam ducks his head down, hunching his shoulders, and Dean lifts his hair and probes gently at his scalp. He hears Dean suck in a breath. He can see Dean’s lips press tightly together, can see his furrowed brow.

“Is it bad?”

“No,” Dean says flatly. “No, it’s nothing, you’re fine.”

 

*

 

The ghost doesn’t show up again. They head back downstairs and Dean points out the old journal in the recent acquisitions that he swears had set the EMF meter off like crazy, although now it doesn’t make a sound. Dean says it needs new batteries. They take the journal outside and salt and burn it, but Sam can tell, without quite knowing how, that the pages are already empty. The ghost is already long gone. Somehow Dean chased it away.

They warm their hands over the meagre flames, watching each other out of the corners of their eyes.

Back at the bunker, Sam washes the blood out of his hair with careful fingers, waiting with bated breath for the shampoo to get into his wounds, but the sting never comes. Afterwards he wipes a hand across the foggy mirror and combs slowly through his hair. He hunts for any mark or tear, for any single sign of broken skin.

 

*

 

Sam sleeps late most days, now; still not used to the light quality in the bunker, he figures – no windows after a lifetime spent sleeping in cars and motels with thin curtains, waking up with the sun at the crack of dawn. He wakes with his limbs heavy and his room frigid. It’s so cold he’s surprised his breath doesn’t cloud in the air, and he can’t get his shower hot enough. A place as old as this, he figures, it’s bound to have some heating problems. He pulls on an extra shirt; he zips his jacket up to his chin, his fingers shaking.

He finds Dean in the war room, poking at the map with his cell phone tucked against his shoulder. He catches Sam’s eye and raises his eyebrow. He’s saying, “We might be able to track him, I dunno. This computer’s a freaking antique, man.”

There is a half-empty mug of coffee by Dean’s chair in the library. Sam grabs it as he passes by, drains it in two mouthfuls with his eyes screwed shut. The coffee is cold. It settles in his stomach like ice.

“Hang on,” he hears Dean say, and then, “Well, you look terrible.”

“Thanks,” Sam says. “That Cas?”

“Yeah.”

“Ask him what he wants for Christmas.”

He rubs his eyes. When he lowers his hands, Dean is frowning at him, fuzzy around the edges. Sam has to blink to clear his vision.

“I dunno if angels celebrate Christmas,” he adds, “but I figure we should get him something, if he’s gonna be here.”

“I’ll call you back,” Dean mutters into his cell. He ends the call and shoves it in his pocket, and then he shakes his head. “Sam, you know he can’t come down here. If his fanclub tracks him down...”

“It’d just be one day.”

“It’s too risky.”

Sam rubs at his eyes again, digging his knuckles in. There is a pressure building. He can feel a headache coming on. “So we – He’s technically not an angel anymore, right? He’s mortal. Why don’t we just... angel-proof this place, see if it’ll let him in?”

Dean looks away from Sam, down at the map and its myriad blinking lights. He scrubs a hand across his face, shaking his head again.

“What if none of these fallen angel douchebags are angel enough for that crap to work on them, now?” he says slowly. “It’s too risky, I’m telling you, Sam. And anyway – ” He clears his throat and looks up again. “Cas probably wouldn’t even wanna come. He’s got his job, he’s making friends, there’s a chick he likes. He’s flown the nest. They grow up so fast.”

He claps Sam on the shoulder and gives him a little shake, beginning to grin. His eyes are darting all over Sam’s face. They never quite meet Sam’s eyes.

“Fine,” Sam says. “Fine. So, you’re trying to track Metatron, right?”

He touches the edge of the map, running his fingers along the cool metal.

“Yeah, maybe. Dunno if it can be done. Might just haveta visit every angel on the board and see if Metatron’s one of them. Maybe Charlie’ll come back from freakin’ – Oompa Loompa land with some ideas.”

“Munchkins.”

“Huh?”

“It’s Munchkins in Oz. Oompa Loompas are – never mind.”

“That’s great, Sam. Real helpful.”

“Shut up.”

Sam looks down at the cold, empty coffee mug still in his hand. His fingers look white, like a hand of the dead.

“Hey,” he says. “Are you – cold?”

“I’m fine,” Dean says.

 

*

 

He texts Cas while Dean is out stocking up on supplies, to ask him what he wants for Christmas. Dean had insisted Sam stay behind in case something came up at the bunker, as if Sam can’t tell when Dean is worried. He’s cold and he’s tired, but he feels fine. He feels good.

He calls Garth and asks if he has any protective amulets.

“Well, sure,” Garth says. Sam hears the sound of a drawer opening, objects rustling and clinking together. “All sorts. I got uh, buttloads of demons, a few evil spirits, I think this one wards off indigestion... What are you up against?”

“Nothing, actually, it’s just a Christmas gift. Hey, you got anything that could ward off angels– ?”

“Sam?” Garth says.

Sam’s head is throbbing. He clears his throat, pinches the bridge of his nose. “The demon one,” he says. “Send me a demon one. And, hey, uh, if you haven’t already got plans, Kevin and Jodie are gonna be here and I think Dean’s gonna cook enough to feed an army.”

“Sweet,” Garth says.

When Sam hangs up he checks his watch and finds it’s an hour later than he thought it was. Cas never does reply to his text, and later Sam can’t find it again in his sent box. How time slips past, he tells himself, without the sun to mark the hours by.

 

*

His first Christmas at Stanford he spent cloistered away in his deserted dorm, his roommate gone for the holidays; his second, with a group of friends who couldn’t make it home, who called their parents and grandparents after dinner, who reminisced about all their family holiday traditions until Sam, too, had almost picked up his phone. His third year, he went home with Jess and met her parents for the first time. They had asked about his family and Jess had whispered, “Mom, I warned you...” 

When Sam thinks of Christmas, he thinks of being alone; or of being afraid of being alone. 

Something whispers to him now _you don’t have to be alone._

 

*

 

“How much do we even know about angels?” Sam says. “I mean, _really_ know?”

“We know they’re dicks,” Dean mutters, stirring the sauce.

The kitchen is Dean’s room, really, in the same way the library is Sam’s. When he’s down here, he chops what Dean tells him to chop and stirs what Dean tells him to stir. He’s cutting up a pile of carrots now; if nothing else, Sam knows how to handle a knife.

“So, they’re petty. They squabble, they fight. How many civil wars have they had up there even just since we found out about them? There’s gotta be at least a few on Cas’ side now, right?”

“And, what? You think they’d help us find Metatron?”

“Maybe,” Sam says, with a shrug, rocking the knife slow and steady against the chopping board. “It’s worth a shot. We don’t know how angels sense each other, do we? How they recognise each other when they’re in different vessels? When I could sense the Metatron, after the second trial, it was like... I _knew_ it was him and not anyone else. Maybe that’s how angels feel.”

He pushes his chopped carrot to the side with the edge of his knife and picks up a fresh one from the pile. Knife hovering in his hand over the chopping board, he watches Dean out of the corner of his eye: Dean lowering his wooden spoon, Dean turning to look at him.

“Do you think that’d work?” Dean asks him slowly.

“I know as much as you, Dean.”

“Yeah. No, I mean, do _you_ –”

There is blood on the chopping board. 

Suddenly Sam’s hand feels on fire. He yelps and throws the knife down, clutching at his fingers, his palm already drenched and slippery. He stares at the neatly chopped carrot until Dean grabs him and drags him to the sink.

“Jesus, man,” Dean is saying, wrenching the faucet. “You gotta be more careful with him.”

“Did I chop that carrot?” Sam asks.

“What?” Dean forces his hand under the water. It’s so cold Sam gasps and starts to pull away again, but Dean holds him in place. “Bigger things happening right now, Sam.”

“No, I...” Sam is shivering. “I don’t remember doing it.”

“I think you’ve cut the tip off a finger,” Dean groans. “We gotta get it checked out, come on.”

“Why’s the water so cold?” Sam breathes.

“It’s not that cold –”

Sam blinks. His hand feels numb from the cold water, but his fingers are intact. The blood has almost washed away, leaving a few streaks on his palm and the back of his hand. Dean’s hand is on his wrist.

Sam flexes his fingers. “What...?”

Dean says, “It’s fine. You’re fine.”

“You thought I’d cut the tip off,” Sam says. He rubs his thumb over the tips of his fingers and feels no pain. He presses harder.

“It’s fine,” Dean says again. “Guess it looked worse than it was, with all that blood.”

“There’s nothing there.”

“It was just a little nick,” Dean says. “Practically a paper cut.”

“No,” Sam breathes.

Dean shakes his head. He turns the faucet off and pats his hands dry with a dish cloth, glaring down at it. Sam stares at the blood on the chopping board.

“You saw it, right?” he asks. “I’m not hallucinating - You saw blood, too?”

“Yeah.” Dean touches his shoulder. “I saw it. Just a paper cut, Sam.”

 

*

 

“You’ve changed, Sammy, my boy,” Crowley says.

Sam lifts his chin and stares down at him until Crowley tilts his head back, grins and smacks his lips together.

He says, “I can almost taste it. I bet you could, too. We’re connoisseurs, you and I.”

“Shut up,” Sam says, automatically. He breathes out slowly through his nose, adds, “What do you mean?”

“I could tell you,” Crowley says, “but it’ll cost ya extra.”

He’s translated another batch of cuneiform for them, cheerfully insisting all the while that Metatron’s spell is irreversible and if he’d known how easy it was to steal that idiot Castiel’s grace he would’ve done it himself aeons ago. It’s a simple exchange they’ve got going: knowledge for blood. Sam could refuse him extra. But it’s warmer in the dungeon, somehow, than in any other room in the bunker, as if Crowley has spent enough time in the pit to carry its essence with him wherever he goes.

Sam walks out into the file room. He grabs the first aid kit again, along with a tumbler and a bottle of whiskey. He takes a seat opposite Crowley, just on the edge of the demon trap, and he pulls out another syringe.

Crowley watches it with hungry eyes. “Drinking with the devil, eh, Sam?”

Sam snorts softly.

“You? You’re just a little kid in a Hallowe’en costume,” he says, “compared to him.”

“Right, right. You and him, old pals. You,” Crowley snaps his fingers, points at him, “were the chosen one, weren’t you? Ah, time flies.”

Sam puts the blood-filled syringe down by his feet, on the edge of the trap. Pours himself a finger of whiskey and sets the glass down on the floor beside it. Crowley is staring at the syringe by his feet. 

Sam says, “Tell me.”

“Extra seasoning, Sammy.” Crowley grins at him wide, with teeth. “Not quite human. You’re like a cherry coke when your brother and your prophet brat are nice, cold classics. Who knows what havoc quitting the trials wreaked in your ridiculous body? Course, you were never really human to begin with. Maybe there wasn’t enough humanity left in you to complete the final trial, even if you’d wanted to.”

“Human enough to make you _feel_ , Crowley.”

“Ah, Sam, I always feel.” He lays a hand on his chest. “If you cut me, do I not bleed?”

“Do you?” Sam asks, softly.

“Well, you’d know. Never tempted to pick up the old habit, with your own fresh supply languishing right here in your basement?”

“No.”

Sam gently kicks the syringe into the devil’s trap. It rattles across the floor and comes to a stop against a table leg. 

“Little help?” Crowley says.

Sam shakes his head. With a sigh, Crowley stretches out a leg and nudges the syringe closer with his toes until he can reach down and fumble for it with his fingertips. He grabs it up and lifts it up to his nose, inhaling deeply.

“A fine vintage,” he says, smirking.

“Why is it always blood?” Sam breathes.

Crowley cocks his head. Slipping the syringe into his breast pocket, as if it were a Cuban cigar, he looks up at Sam from under his eyebrows. 

“The blood’s where all the power is.” He pats his pocket. “All that _pizzazz._ Where do you think we go, when we take your meatsuits for a ride? We’re in the _bloodstream_ , Sammy. We’re in every fleshy, messy part of you.” 

“What about angels?” Sam asks.

He blinks and the world jolts. A buzzing in his ears – 

Sam looks down at his hands and finds he’s rubbing the old scar on his palm. He picks the whiskey up and sips it. It’s too cold. Crowley is watching him, his expression inscrutable. There is something Sam’s forgotten.

“Merry Christmas,” he says, lifting the glass.

 

*

 

Sam wakes up with snow in his eyes. He startles so hard he almost falls over, catching his balance on the icy road. Whipping around, he searches the darkness for Dean, but he’s alone. It’s night time and the sky is black, a few stars and their cold glow on the snow the only light to see by. He can make out the bunker entrance a few yards away, the door ajar.

“Hello?” he calls.

There is no reply. 

He’s wearing the same sweatpants and t-shirt he went to bed in. His feet are bare. Now he’s awake, he’s beginning to shiver. He trudges through the snow, back over his own forgotten footprints. Inside the bunker, it’s even darker than it was outside, and maybe even colder. Sam leans back against the inside of the door, shivering, and closes his eyes. He breathes out slowly.

He walks back to bed. On the way past Dean’s room, the door opens and Dean sticks his head out into the corridor, smothering a yawn with the back of his hand.

“Sam?” he says around the yawn. He rubs his eyes, glances at his watch and cracks a grin. “Hey, merry Christmas.”

“Yeah, merry Christmas,” Sam says. “Just stretching my legs.”

Dean nods and disappears back into his room, yawning again.

Sam walks back to his own room and sits on the bed and stares at the small row of neatly wrapped gifts on his dresser. He imagines he can hear someone breathing down the back of his neck, whispering words too low to hear.

 

*

 

The day moves in fits and starts, as though Sam is slipping in and out of a dream. He’s hugging Jodie – and then he’s high-fiving Garth, his hand already swinging in motion – and then Kevin is staring up at him in expectation, waiting for the answer to some question that Sam didn’t hear.

“Yeah,” Sam says, and then, “Sorry, Kevin, I gotta go talk to De–”

He’s sitting around the Men of Letters’ vast dinner table, his mouth full of potato, so sudden he starts coughing and Dean thumps him on the back.

“Don’t forget to chew, genius,” he says, laughing.

There are tears in Sam’s eyes.

“Hey,” Sam says, “can I talk to you outside?”

Dean follows him out into the corridor. Behind them Sam can still hear the sounds of laughter, from conversations he doesn’t remember having; and the whole bunker is rich with the scent of food he doesn’t remember eating.

“Dean,” Sam says. 

Dean holds up his hand. “Presents, right? I know, I’m getting impatient too.”

He’s pulling a rectangular parcel out of his back pocket, wrapped in newspaper, and he thrusts into Sam’s hands with a grin. He holds his own hands out expectantly.

Sam grips the parcel tightly.

“Dean,” he says again. “I think there’s something seriously wrong with me–”

He’s sitting in the smoking room, Dean’s knee pressed against his knee. Kevin and Garth are arguing about Star Trek, Jodie curled up dozing with a mug of eggnog in her hands. In his hands Sam holds Dean’s gift, a leather-bound journal like Dad’s, and when he flicks it open he finds a post-it note stuck to the front page. ‘For all new men of letters/hunting freaky shit,’ it reads.

Sam glances sideways at Dean. He’s fiddling with his cell phone, head bowed. Around his neck hangs the new amulet, and Sam wishes, for a moment, that when Dean had opened it Sam could have seen his face. He wishes he could have had that.

“Check this out,” Dean says, holding up his cell. “Cas says happy Christmas, everyone. Or something like that, I dunno, I think he’s drunk. Eggnog,” he adds in hushed tones.

Garth says, “Hey, Sam, I’ve been researching what you asked me, about warding off angels–”

The journal has fallen off Sam’s lap. He’s rubbing the old scar again. Something whispers to him now, _I promise you will never be alone._

“You promised you’d never trick me,” he says.

And then, “But I never promised not to trick your brother, did I, Sammy?”

Sam closes his eyes –

 

*

 

“Thanks, Dean. Couldn’t have done it without you,” Lucifer says.


End file.
